Weekend Update, Mono E for Charity, Why The Happening Ain't Happening, Aliens in Colorado

Hey, Adventurers!!! Hope ya'll had a good weekend! Mine was pretty good.
So I went to this Animal Law conference on Friday up in Dallas. It was pretty interesting, but the majority of the information dealt with issues involving nonprofit animal advocacy and welfare groups (everything from the ASPCA to legislative watchdog groups which monitor legislation that has an impact on animal welfare), with a comparatively smaller portion of the material covering the sort of cruelty to animals cases that my office deals with.
Friday night I got back to town and went out for dinner with Team Steans.
Saturday I got up and went and got a shiny new haircut from my friend and hair cutter person, Kellie Jo Gonzales (she also happens to be Mandy's sister), and afterward I went with Ryan and Jamie to Barton Springs. The Springs were a little bit crowded, but it was really nice, anyway. There's something about the sun and that water that just makes my whole body sort of unwind.
Afterward we had a bite to eat at some barbecue/brewpub place on Barton Srpings Drive that just wasn't very good.
Saturday night I had dinner with Team Steans and my dad, The Admiral, who had come up to Austin for the weekend to perform some errands at my parents' new house out in Steiner Ranch. My mom, The Karebear, is currently on a church trip in Kenya, working at a clinic and helping to get people hooked up with eyeglasses. The situation is a bit strange, as our family is sort of used to my dad jetting around the globe on business (Dad's company makes oil drilling and pipeline equipment) while mom tends the homefires. So for this trip there's a bit of role reversal going on. Anyhoo, we had Chinese food for dinner, and had a nice time.
Sunday I went to Curra's with Ryan and Jamie for breakfast/lunch and then spent most of the afternoon sort of goofing around reading, playing XBox, and trying to write some music (I think I might have come up with one song that's kind of somewhat viable- working title: "Mr. Hide"). Sunday night we had Mono Ensemble practice.
Incidentally, The Mono Ensemble is playing a charity event this upcoming Thursday which benefits the Texas Advocacy Project (the Texas Advocacy Project Provides legal services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault throughout the state of Texas). We're playing at The Alligator Grill on South Lamar from 5:00 until 7:00. The only catch is that there's a $25 donation fee to come to this event. I know that most of you are thinking to yourself, "Only $25 to see Mono Ensemble play for 2 hours?!?! Why, I'd gladly pay five times that amount!!!", but for the one or two of you who are cash strapped and afflicted with frugality, try to remember that the the $25 is actually meant to be a charitable donation to a good cause- it's not just a tiny pittance representing only a small fraction of the inherent worth of any Mono Ensemble performance.

Sometime late Saturday night I watched The Happening. The Happening was a sort of fascinating movie. It was pretty awful, so it was that kind of fascinating. [spoiler alert, but does anyone really care with this movie?] The movie started out with a premise that I found kind of interesting and full of potential, at least in terms of a horror movie perspective: something has happened (some chemical has been released, or some radiation is affecting people, or something...) which is causing people's natural self preservation instinct to work in reverse, causing people to kill themselves en masse. I actually found that a scary, disturbing premise (and given the way that chemicals can affect the brain, I found this basic idea strangely plausible). Initially this suicide theme sounded troubling enough that it actually kept me from wanting to see the movie. There's something more disturbing, in my mind, about a bunch of people randomly killing themselves than there is about the more typical serial killers, demons, ghosts, and other bugaboos that make up the normal ranks of horror movie antagonists. But part of the failure of The Happening is that M. Night Shyamalan seems to have no idea what to do with this concept or how to handle it.
As I watched this movie, the natural horror and revulsion that I expected to feel at the thought of someone taking their own life (let alone watching someone do this) began to twist itself into ridiculousness and absurdity as it became evident that Shyamalan was going to use the movie as an opportunity to think up and portray as many twisted methods as he could come up with of people killing themselves. The first few deaths in the movie are kind of disturbing, but they eventually become sort of silly- to the point of eventually bordering on some really black humor (this is a big ol' spoiler, but there's a scene where a guy jumps into the lion cage at the zoo, and then, wanting to kill himself, taunts the lions until they tear his arms off. The scene should have been horrifying, but in its execution it mostly reminded me of the "It's only a flesh wound!" scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail). I ended up chuckling at what was meant to be a gruesome suicide scene. Apparently this mysterious suicide-inducing force is not only causing its zombie-like victims to kill themselves, but also compelling them to do so in the most foolish, painful, and creative ways possible (there are scenes involving lawnmowers, tree trimmers, construction workers, and more than one scene where mutliple people take turns emptying handguns into their own heads, one person picking up the gun after another until they run out of bullets).
In the midst of this supposed horror, the protagonists seem to occasionally be momentarily bothered by all of this self inflicted death, but then seem to shake these events off extremely quickly. And in the mdst of this, sometimes they tell jokes.
Other problems with the film include some gaping holes in its logic (e.g., the characters run more quickly than some fairly strong winds for considerable distances in order to escape the unknown pathogen, the film fails to explain why the phenomenon never extended beyond the Northeastern United States, and decision-making on the part of the characters includes a desire to travel in groups, even after they realize that the toxin seems to be affecting areas where clusters of mutiple people have gathered. Also, the ending was pretty lame.).
In addition, the movie also gives up any sort of surprise ending by divulging the origin of the toxic material about halfway through the film. I'm guessing Shyamalan was a little gun shy this time around about creating another movie with a lackluster "Ta-Da!!"-style surprise ending (although I'm not sure that just giving away your big surprise halfway through the movie is really the way to deal with this issue).
And there were other problems. The movie went on longer than it should, and it had scenes in it that just didn't seem to contribute to the overall story. There was a werid, almost apologetic attempt to infuse some humor into the script, but the humor just ended up feeling really weird and out of place in a film about mass suicide. I got the feeling that Shyamalan decided he needed to sort of change things up or make a different movie when he was in the middle of creating this thing, but once he decided to mix things up, he had no idea where it should go (his original plan being, as my brother wisely pointed out, probably something akin to Hitchcock's The Birds, but with attack trees and some sort of clumsy message about the environment thrown in).
Ooookay, enough said about The Happening. I don't really keep up with The Razzies that closely, but I remember hearing that Shyamalan was nominated for worst director of the year or something like that for Lady in the Water back in 2006 (never saw it), and it seems like I vaguely remember hearing that maybe The Happening was nominated for 2008.
I really, truly liked The Sixth Sense, and while I understand that it's often difficult for directors to repeat the success of some of their finest work, I just don't understand why Shyamalan seems unable to differentiate between decent filmmaking and total schlock. This thing should have just gone straight to video.
Oh well.
I also watched Aliens v. Predator- Requiem last night on cable. I only vaguely remember this movie being released, and I remember it being panned pretty harshly when it came out. Personally, I had gone to see the Alien v. Predator movie in 2004 that involved a bunch of Alien/Predator hijinks in Antarctica, and that movie was bad enough to make me think that I never wanted to see either an Alien or a Predator movie again. This newer AVP movie wasn't going to be winning any Academy Awards, either, but in its defense, I actually found it more interesting and entertaining than the last AVP movie. [spoilers, sort of] The movie involves a Predator spaceship which crashes on Earth in Colorado after its Predator occupants become infected with Alien embryos. There were several more nods toward the original Alien and Predator movies in this film (which is always satisfying for people who are fans of an overall franchise), and there were some kind of cool fight scenes in this movie. Also, it was kind of fun to watch Aliens and Predators roaming around a modern day, rural community (as opposed to deep space or some pseudo-Aztec, Antarctic temple). The plot wasn't all that innovative, but I thought it could have been much worse.
I didn't watch every single second of this movie very closely (Reed and I were talking during parts of it), and my viewing experience was probably made more palatable because I stumbled onto this movie on late night cable instead of paying money to see it in a theater, but I sort of enjoyed Alien v. Predator- Requiem. I've definitely seen worse.

Well, I guess that's about it. Sharon Begley had an interesting article about the real, measurable effects of placebos in last week's Newsweek that I found sort of tangentially relevant to the recent discussion on this blog about homeopathic and alternative medicines. I like that Sharon Begley. She consistently produces some thought-provoking columns.

Take care, guys. Mandy is in Boston, visiting friends and going to a Phish concert or two, and Mom is in Africa. Hope they have fun, safe trips!!

p.s.- This whole story about the Air France jet that disappeared while flying from Brazil to Paris is kind of creepy. It's undoubtedly tragic, but the fact that they don't know what happened to it or where it went down just feels sort of strange.